"ALASKA: a play about the pursuit of happiness in an abusive world", Mariupol theatre of Ukraine in Exile, Ukraine

The Project

An umbrella project that includes: 2 residencies and the recreation of the award winning performance ALASKA with locals every time, a toolkit-booklet detailing our methodology, three documentary films (two local, one final) and a digital dissemination strategy across Europe, powered by our team that is based in 10 EU countries.

A multilingual, documentary-based performance created with young people from Mariupol, Ukraine, ALASKA explores war, trauma, love, loneliness, and the universal search for meaning. In each country (Italy, Poland) the project invites local youth and displaced Ukrainians to co-create and perform the play after a seven-day devising workshop. Each version features a new mixed cast, offering a safe space for self-expression, healing, and connection.

Local directors and theatre-makers are invited to observe the entire process, learning the tools we use to engage emotionally affected participants. After the residency, we stay in contact with them for one year, offering mentoring and support as they adapt the method in their own projects.

Born in Mariupol’s Theatre before its destruction in 2022, ALASKA is a living, evolving message of peace. The project includes audience engagement through surveys, three documentaries, and a Toolkit–Booklet to share our trauma-informed methodology across Europe, ensuring scalability and long-term legacy.

© Photo : Jacek Klejment

The organization

Established in 1992 by the director Iryna Rudenko and existed until 2022 in Mariupol of Ukraine and now we are in exile. The whole earth saw our house being bombed and Iryna tragically died during the siege of the city. During its existence, the Harlequin Association was created, which included the Puppet Theatre, the First Theatre School, the Character Youth Theatre and other departments. Now The Mariupol Theatre of Ukraine in Exile is a displaced artistic collective consisting of artists, actors, directors and documentary cinematographers working across Europe. We create documentary, participatory and socially engaged performances rooted in testimony, memory, resilience and community co-creation. Our mission is to preserve Ukrainian cultural identity, support artists affected by war and develop collaborations that support stories of resistance and empowerment. Our performance “Alaska” has been presented and developed through residencies and collaborations in Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Hungary.

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"KomshiLOOK Zhelezara: A neighborhood in three Acts", KomshiLOOK Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia

The Project

KomshiLOOK Zhelezara: A Neighborhood in Three Acts is a two-day, site-specific cultural festival that transforms a block of six cascading 1980s residential buildings in Skopje into an open-air stage for opera, film, and community-led events. This rare modernist structure - now surrounded by unplanned urban development :/ becomes both backdrop and protagonist in a celebration of overlooked architecture and civic life.

Building on a successful 2024 pilot, the 2026 edition introduces a full narrative experience: a reimagined version of La Traviata performed in three acts (30–20–30 minutes) across three locations within the block. The opera retains its original libretto but is adapted to local context—a gossiping neighbor replaces the strict father, and the tragic ending becomes a wedding celebration. As the audience moves with the story, the music evolves from classical to Macedonian evergreens, folklore, brass bands, and techno-folk dance fusion.

Between acts, visitors engage with exhibitions, film screenings, dinners, and workshops scattered throughout the neighborhood. On the second day, residents host a communal breakfast and public reflection. With neighbors as hosts, performers, and co-creators, KomshiLOOK reclaims everyday space for culture offering a living model for participation, presence, and urban belonging.

© Photo: KomshiLOOK Archive, 2024

The organization

KomshiLOOK is a community art festival that turns overlooked everyday spaces into places of creativity and connection. By bringing artists and neighbors together, it redefines what public space can be: a shared stage where art, empathy and dialogue transform the spirit of the neighborhood. Komshi (meaning neighbor) and look invite us to look closer and deeper into our surroundings and the people next door.

"Cinemini Europe: Including All", Eye Filmmuseum, Netherlands

The Project

Cinemini Europe: Including all is a film education project, designed in collaboration with several European partners, aimed at children aged 3 – 6 with a hearing impairment to introduce them to cinema in a playful and meaningful way and to offer them a new language to express themselves. The Cinemini Europe consortium was originally founded in 2019 and developed a toolkit for educational and film professionals across Europe and the rest of the world, to provide them with practical tools to design high-quality film education activities for the young age group of 3 - 6, which is currently underserved. Through creative activities, children explore film as an art form and experience a carefully curated selection of short European films – ranging from early cinema classics to contemporary animations and experimental works. While Cinemini is technically accessible for children with a hearing impairment, it is not yet truly meaningful or empowering for them. With support from the Art Explora Prize, we aim to co-create new inclusive tools and film selections in collaboration with this target group – ensuring the programme is not only accessible, but genuinely relevant and impactful for children with a hearing impairment.

© Photo : Eye Filmmuseum

The organization

Eye Filmmuseum, located on Amsterdam’s IJ harbour, is the national museum for film and the leading institute for Dutch cinema. Its collection of over 60,000 films spans all genres, from early cinema and classics to contemporary and experimental works, alongside photographs, posters, archives, and film apparatus. Eye preserves and presents film as art, entertainment, and cultural heritage, while also exploring the latest developments in cinema through exhibitions, screenings, and debates.

Education is central to Eye’s mission. Every year, tens of thousands young visitors and students across the Netherlands participate in workshops, guided tours, interactive programs, and nationwide school visits, fostering media literacy, critical thinking, and visual awareness. Collaborating with filmmakers, educators, and European partners, Eye develops innovative approaches to make film culture accessible, inclusive, and relevant for diverse audiences and future generations.

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"Turning the Tide", Thames Festival Trust, United Kingdom

The Project

Turning the Tide is a major cultural engagement project by Turner Prize-nominated artist Catherine Yass, designed to challenge perceptions of disabled people in public space and empower disabled young creatives. Key elements include:

Partners: Delivered with Thames Festival Trust, disabled-led theatre company Graeae, and the City of London Culture Service.

Main Installation: A site-specific film installation projected onto the iconic, abandoned old Blackfriars Railway Bridge columns over four nights in September 2026, featuring young disabled performers and reaching an estimated 10,000 viewers.

Creative Development: Collaboratively developed with a disabled-led artistic team including Artistic Director of Graeae Jenny Sealey, promoting excellence in work by D/deaf, disabled, and neurodivergent artists.

Education Programme: A UK-wide series of visual art workshops (June 2026–March 2027) in filming, photography, and projection, co-designed for disabled and SEND children, young people, and adults, led by Yass.

Exhibition: A month-long riverside display featuring community-created artworks and insights into the creative process, with an expected audience of 390,000.

Final Film: A standalone artwork film by Yass and videographer Hugo Glendinning, to be screened nationally in 2027 at venues such as ICA and Whitechapel Gallery, with wide scope for national & international touring potential.

© Photo : Catherine Yass

The organization

Thames Festival Trust has been in operation for 29 years, working as a charity which reveals rivers’ rich natural capital, shares their unique history and celebrates the diverse links they make for within our communities and with the wider world. Each year, the Trust reaches 175,000 beneficiaries via art, heritage and environmental programmes. The Trust’s education projects have rich in-person and online dimensions, engaging and widening the horizons of thousands of children and young people around the UK and overseas. Since 1997, the Trust has delivered Totally Thames, a renowned annual festival running throughout the whole of September. The festival acts as the cultural voice of the River Thames, bringing together artists and communities and welcoming 25,000 Londoners every year. Turning the Tide by Catherine Yass, will be the highlight of Totally Thames festival 2026.

"Golden Age - Performing Art Education for inmates and children", Teatringestazione, Italy

The Project

Golden Age is a theatre education, programming and production project for adult prisoners and their teenage children involving international artists, students, citizens. It restores political transformative power to artistic work in the social sphere, turning an act of relational mending into an act of social weaving, poetically reconstructing the parent-child and society-prisoner relationship. The programme includes ongoing theatre education, accompanied by intensive workshops conducted by international performing arts professionals; complemented by a period of professionalisation based on the production of a play, presented during a final event open to the public.

In conjunction with the intensive workshops, the international artists will present their repertory work staged in the prison and open to the public, making up a programme of events. Golden Age gives rise to a hybrid space with social, artistic, poetic and political values. The presence and rotation of professional figures in the field of performing arts, active at an international level, dropped into the local dimension of the prison, creates a short-circuit that unleashes new energies and inspires good practices and new interactions, renewing the artists' aesthetics and the atrophied imagination of the inmates, activating unprecedented relational and collaborative dynamics and finally attracting a transversal and heterogeneous public.

© Photo: Roberta Ruggiero

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The organization

Teatringestazione is a Naples-based performing arts company founded in 2006, recognised by Italy's Ministry of Culture as a theatre production organisation specialising in research and artistic experimentation. For over twenty years, the company has developed hybrid performative environments, working internationally in live performance creation, training, curatorial and social projects. Led by artists and curators Anna Gesualdi and Giovanni Trono, Teatringestazione operates across diverse cultural and social contexts — from international festivals to prisons, hospitals, schools, and marginalised and vulnerable communities. Their approach combines performances with participatory practices, using varied expressive languages that emphasise the relationship between body and space while blending poetic and political dimensions. Rooted in concepts of 'poetic citizenship' and 'experimental sociality', the company challenges everyday life through artistic actions that question conventional live performance formats. Their work focuses on long-term artistic research into the performative potential of places and communities, creating transformative experiences that bridge art and social change.

The project

Palau Vincles is the socio-musical intervention project through choral singing (born in 2011 and promoted by the ”Fundació Orfeó Català-Palau de la Música”) which is aimed at children and young people in vulnerable situations, who live in areas of high socio-economic complexity.

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Organization

The Palau de la Música Catalana, built between 1905 and 1908 by Modernist architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an emblem of Catalan Modernism. It serves as a cultural and social hub, deeply valued by the people of Catalonia for its history and symbolism.

The Fundació Orfeó Català-Palau de la Música Catalana manages the Palau’s activities and the Orfeó Català choirs. Open and inclusive, it seeks to enhance society through music, focusing on choral singing, cultural heritage dissemination, and social cohesion. Its mission is to promote music, foster understanding and transmission of cultural heritage, and contribute to social integration while strengthening Catalan culture and universal values.

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The project

The ”Tell Me Your Story” project aims to create a digital repository to preserve the rich cultural heritage of the Cycladic islands, specifically Anafi, Sikinos, and Kea. These islands, deeply rooted in traditional practices and folklore, face threats from overtourism and climate change, which undermine their unique identity. The project will gather oral histories through intergenerational interviews, focusing on material culture, biodiversity, and intangible traditions. The Museum of Cycladic Art, through its ”Cycladic Identity” initiative, leads the project with support from partners like the Heritage Management Organization and the National Technical University of Athens.  

By utilizing innovative technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and Large Language Models (LLMs), the project will streamline the transcription and thematic analysis of oral stories. Human experts will work alongside AI to ensure cultural accuracy and preserve these traditions for future generations. The project aims to connect younger generations with their cultural roots and raise awareness about Cycladic heritage both locally and globally. It will also serve as a model for future cultural preservation initiatives in other insular communities. Community engagement, digital platform development, and global outreach are central components of this initiative, fostering both local involvement and international cultural exchange.

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Organization

The Museum of Cycladic Art holds one of the most complete collections of Cycladic Art in the world showcasing the famous marble figurines of the 3rd millennium BC that have influenced several twentieth and twenty-first century artists, such as Brancusi, Modigliani, Giacometti, Hepworth, and Moore. Committed to inspiring and benefiting multiple communities, the Museum has made its mark in the city of Athens, within and beyond its walls. The Museum of Cycladic Art is a non-profit legal entity under private law, supervised by the Ministry of Culture. It receives no state funding, and its collections belong to the Greek State.

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The project

Designed and implemented by the CN D Centre national de la danse, 1km of dance is a festive event, entirely for free. Over a one-kilometre area of public space, there are performances, group warm-ups, dance initiations, DJ sets, etc. Since its creation in Pantin in 2022, 1km de danse has brought together local residents, dance associations, music centres and artists to get as many people as possible dancing together. Open to all types and styles of dance, 1km de danse helps to raise awareness of dance as an art form. The event helps to spread dance throughout the country by giving both amateurs and professionals the chance to get together and dance together. Building on the success of the first two editions in Pantin, the 2024 event was held in three towns: Château-Thierry with the CDCN - L'Échangeur, La Rochelle with the CCN - Mille Plateaux and Sète with the Scène nationale - Théâtre Molière. This dynamic will continue in 2025, with 4 new towns confirmed and 5 others in the process of being validated. The aim is for 1km de danse to become a national event taking place in a large number of towns in France and overseas.

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Organization

A public institution created on the initiative of the French Ministry of Culture, the CN D brings together all the resources at the service of the choreographic sector and its audiences. It accompanies and trains professional dancers, encourages amateur practice, supports research, preserves and disseminates choreographic heritage, supports the creation of choreographic works in all their diversity, and dialogues with other artistic fields.

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The project

Trafó House of Contemporary Arts (Budapest) and Studio ALTA (Prague) join forces to realize new tours of Studio ALTA’s ”PerformanceBus” in Hungary, further developing the experience of earlier dispatches in Czech Republic and Armenia. The ”PerformanceBus” was originally conceived by Studio ALTA with the aim of decentralizing attention directed towards the diverse platforms, institutions and individual activities dedicated to performance art in different regions of the country. In Hungary, due to the ongoing political changes and the shrinking access to critical culture across the country, it has become an increasingly pressing question for Trafó, how the institution could decentralize its activities and facilitate access to contemporary art in different parts of the country. Without institutional partners and public infrastructures that could make the regional touring of artists possible, this becomes a task for new artistic and curatorial imaginaries, which is why we are interested in the experimental project ”PerformanceBus”. Together with Studio ALTA and in collaboration with local artists, we would like to realize three tours of the ”PerformanceBus” in Trafó’s 2025/2026 season, in order to open up a “magic portal” and imagine a more free, democratic and equal acccess to contemporary art and critical culture across Hungary.

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Organization

TRAFÓ House of Contemporary Arts, founded in 1998, is an important venue for contemporary arts in Hungary, renowned for its transdisciplinary approach spanning visual arts, performing arts, and music. Operating as a publicly funded municipal institution, it has maintained a stable position in Hungary’s challenging cultural landscape. Recognized as a cornerstone of the international contemporary arts scene in Central and Eastern Europe, TRAFÓ presents and co-produces cutting-edge artistic works. Its diverse programs include performances, concerts, exhibitions, and outreach initiatives aimed at accessibility, openness, and social inclusion. Beyond being an art institution, TRAFÓ serves as a forum for societal dialogue, fostering open and multi-voiced exchange. In the past, TRAFÓ has worked extensively in urban public spaces, producing and presenting site-specific work by local and international artists.